Paul Lambert still believes Ipswich Town can beat the drop following this afternoon’s gut-wrenching 3-2 defeat to fellow relegation-battlers Millwall at Portman Road.
Jack Lankester gave the Blues a second minute lead, but Town failed to take several more first half chances before hitting the self-destruct button against a team who had failed to win on the road before today.
Since the Championship rebrand in 2004/05, no team has had fewer points on the board at this stage of the campaign.
Rotherham’s win against Preston means the rock-bottom Blues are now 10 points adrift of safety and staring down the barrel of playing third-tier football for the first time since 1957.
“Yeah, but as long as I’ve got a heartbeat then we’ll keep going,” insisted Lambert. “I’ll never go negative. I’ll always keep the positivity. If you ask me if its achievable; absolutely it is. Absolutely it is.
“We are playing some really good football. We need just a little bit of help and a little bit of know-how.”
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Reflecting on the game, he said: “We should have been three up. I think we were excellent first half, we dominated the game, dominated the ball and had unbelievable chances. I don’t think anybody would have begrudged us going in at 3-0 because I think we were that far ahead.
“The football we played was great, but we had to take the chances.
“Second half, we spoke about it, I knew if Steve Morison came on we would have to deal with long balls and headers. We never dealt with that really.
“Moro has more appearances than our whole midfield put together. That’s how good a career the lad has had. They had two big lads up front, we’re a young side trying to deal with that physicality and we never dealt with it.
“I think we got caught up with the emotion of the game too. I think some of the lads got caught up emotionally with some of the decisions which I thought were strange.”
He continued: “Some of the decisions certainly went against us. I thought we should have had a penalty in the first half when (Matthew) Pennington gets done.
“He (referee Stephen Martin) booked me for going on the pitch. The pitch is so close to the technical area I didn’t even realise I had gone on it. I must have been a centimetre on the pitch. I don’t understand that one because I never said anything derogatory or used bad language or anything. I might have thrown my hands up.
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“Some of the things I heard in the technical area were shocking. We’ll be sending our report in.”
On the goals conceded, Lambert said: “They are just long balls. Flynn Downes, I’ve seen it back, that was never a free-kick which led to the corner. Jordan (Spence) should have dealt with it better, but it should never have happened because Flynn Downes won the ball.
“The penalty I’ve yet to see again, but I think it is a really strong, strong challenge when the lad went in on Deano (Gerken) when they scored (the third). “
He added: “I think we got caught up in the emotion. We’re a young side that needs to learn that and the only way they will learn is through experience.
“In terms of the physicality, as I said before, we need to get a little bit of help in.”
Lambert said yesterday he wants to sign ‘at least half a dozen’ players sooner rather than later in the January transfer window.
“We’re talking to a few lads and we’ll do everything we can to get them in,” said the Blues boss.
“I’m hoping lads want to come and play if they are not playing for their respective teams. You are a footballer, that’s your job and it’s the greatest game in the world. You want people who actually want to come, not maybe take three weeks to think about it. That’s the big thing.”
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